Investigating...

On Facebook this morning I saw a Clarice Feldman post indicating that a woman named Kim Fritts was the campaign manager for Jeb Bush, CEO of Uranium One, and CEO of the Podesta Group! Curiosity aroused, I went to Google. I found confirmation on Facebook that she is CEO of the Podesta Group in a post dated August 26, 2015 with this photo of her.


On June 15, 2015 Catherine Ho reported in the Washington Post,

Kimberley Fritts, chief executive of lobby shop Podesta Group, worked for Jeb Bush during his first gubernatorial campaign in 1994, and is continuing her support this time around through fundraising and recruiting members of Congress to support the former Florida governor’s efforts in their states.

“Last week we rolled out a number of endorsements with the Florida delegation,” she said. “We think it’s been going well.” Fritts flew to Miami this morning to meet with members of Bush’s team, and will head back to D.C. later today.

Kristina Wong reported in Breitbart on 10-30-17,

Podesta is handing over full operational and control to the firm’s CEO Kimberley Fritts, according to the report. Fritts and a senior group of the Podesta team will be launching a new firm in the next one or two days, a move reportedly in the works for the past several months.

Read more here.

Here I learned that she was the Southern Political Director of the Republican National Committee in 1993.

Charles Lewis mentions her in this post at The Center for Public Integrity dated 8-30-2000.

The intermeshing of public and private sectors has, of course, been an endemic problem in Washington for years, and the social and professional interaction between the media business and the government that regulates it is, not surprisingly, quite extensive. For example, Podesta & Associates, also known as Podesta.com, is the outside lobbying firm representing the widest array of media behemoths. Since 1996, the company has received $1.5 million as the Washington representative for Viacom, Time Warner and NBC. It is headed by Tony Podesta, whose brother John happens to be the White House chief of staff. Twenty-three members of its staff of 33 formerly worked on Capitol Hill, for either party. One of them, Kimberley Fritts, is the daughter of the president of the National Association of Broadcasters.

NAB thrives on congressional ties
No media organization spends more money lobbying or has more people covering Washington than the National Association of Broadcasters, which has spent $16.9 million to persuade government officials since 1996. NAB President Eddie Fritts was a college classmate and is a close friend of Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott, and on occasion, this relationship has been immensely helpful to the broadcasters. There are 20 registered lobbyists at the NAB, seven of whom came through the revolving door from congressional staffs, the FCC and the Federal Trade Commission. Until recently, their ranks included Kimberly Tauzin, daughter of Billy Tauzin.

Media corporations have spared no expense in Washington, hiring all of the “usual suspects” kind of big-name lobbyists: former Republican Party chairman Haley Barbour (CBS); Patton Boggs Tommy Boggs, son of long-deceased House Majority Leader Hale Boggs and U.S. Ambassador to the Vatican Lindy Boggs, and brother of ABC News correspondent Cokie Roberts, (National Cable Television Association; Magazine Publishers of America); former Reagan White House chief of staff Ken Duberstein (Comcast, National Cable TV Association, Time Warner); former Nixon White House aide Tom Korologos (Cox Communications Corporation); former Carter White House aide Anne Wexler (Comcast, Univision Communications Inc.); and former FCC chairman Richard Wiley (CBS). After all, from copyright issues to broadband access to media ownership rules, billions of dollars were at stake for the transforming media industry.

So far I have not seen anything to indicate Kimberley was ever CEO of Uranium One. I will continue to investigate.